What’s So Great About The H-Box® Box Hockey Quick Build Kit ?

We thought we’d give you some things to consider in case you are wondering what’s so great about the H-Box® Box Hockey Quick Build Kit.

Box Hockey has been around for more than a century. In fact, here is an article from the NY State College of Agriculture as it was published in 1914:

“Box hockey is an excellent active game for picnics camps and playgrounds. It can also be adapted to indoor recreation if the floor upon which it is played is well padded with old rugs to prevent being damaged with the hockey sticks.” “Equipment: Take two pieces [boards] of lumber 2 inches by 10 inches by 8 or 10 feet [5 cm × 25 cm × 2.4 or 3.0 m], and two [end] pieces 1 inch by 10 inches by 4 foot [2.5 cm × 25 cm × 1.2 m] and construct a rectangular box fastening it together with spike nails or wagon bed rods. Take another board 2 inches by 10 inches by 4 feet [5 cm × 25 cm × 1.2 m] and nail it into the rectangular frame, dividing it into two equal compartments. On the bottom side of the box, cut a hole 31⁄2 inches at the base and about 21⁄2 inches high [8.9 cm × 6.4 cm] in the center of each of the end boards, and cut two such holes in the bottom of the dividing board, which make the two equal compartments. These last two holes should be equidistant from the sides of the box. Now get a couple of three-foot [91 cm] sticks and an old baseball and you are ready to play. Almost any kind of a stick will do. Saplings cut off underneath the ground so as to get the curve are very good. Also cheap commercial hockey sticks with the blade reinforced with vtirc are excellent.”

As with ice hockey, particularly at the NHL® level, the game has changed considerably over the intervening years. If you read that description you can see that the original games were quite primitive compared to today. Here are some photos of the “originals”

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It is easy to see that the wooden versions, while being somewhat cheaper to acquire than a molded product, cannot provide the same degree of on-ice simulation as a properly designed product. The major deficiencies lie in the friction between the puck or the necessity to use a ball in order to get the free movement of the puck. Additionally, wooden boxes typically require a lot of maintenance to stop them falling apart. Hockey players can be brutal on their gear !

1990s Style Box Hockey

The hockey box designed in the 1990s, is a molded product that provides much better movement of the puck. However, the puck is not a regulation ice hockey puck but rather a small, hollow, plastic disk, about 1/3rd the size of an ice hockey puck, and about 1 ounce in weight (compared to 6 ounces for a regulation puck). In order to compensate for the light weight of the puck, and the small playing surface, the box hockey game shown in this image is supplied with miniature sticks with small, nylon type, shoes. This product is still available today and typically sells for around $389.

H-Box® Pro Box Hockey

In 2012 H-Box® introduced the H-Box® Pro portable box hockey game. This new design was the inspiration of Roger Frew, an elite coach in the British Columbia minor and junior hockey leagues and an entrepreneur. While his original designs were a significant improvement on the “traditional” square box approach above, Roger wanted to better represent the play on the ice, particularly as he felt it could be a great off-ice training tool. So Roger solicited the aid of a professional mold designer with decades of experience.

Roger and Allen Hepworth designed the product from the ground up applying what Roger knew about coaching hockey to the design of the H-Box®. The result culminated in the assignment of a patent and the production of the H-Box® Pro.

The H-Box® Pro has been selling successfully around the world and we are very pleased about that. However, we recognized that for many, it might be the choice between buying a new set of skates, a new stick (they can be over $300 or even $500 or more), or a box hockey game. At $399 + shipping (or $499 with free shipping), the H-Box® Pro is almost as expensive as a Sony Playstation or XBox with one or two games.

H-Box® Quick Build

We wanted to come up with a way to deliver a great quality product to those whose budget does not stretch to the H-Box® Pro. So, we came up with the H-Box® Box Hockey Quick Build Kit.

With the H-Box® Box Hockey Quick Build Kit you get all of the playing advantages, all of the quality, of the H-Box® Pro box hockey game, without the frills. You get the hardy structural foam molded product, the patented rounded corners and the rigid structure. You get the H-Box® Pro box hockey playing surface at a fraction of the cost, a cost more in line with a ‘build your own square box from Home Depot, or Lowes‘, with the sophistication, quality and performance of the H-Box® Pro. All you need to do is add a puck – we recommend Tom Pederson’s Green Biscuit puck for maximum performance – and a couple of sticks. At $249 + shipping, the H-Box® Box Hockey Quick Build Kit is great value that can’t be beaten.

The H-Box® Box Hockey Quick Build Kit is only available from this web site. We are not selling this box hockey quick build kit through Amazon, eBay or affiliates as this is the only way we can keep the costs down. Our goal is to help you acquire your own H-Box® box hockey game.